Cheese train
/by Krista My children are generally good eaters, but like most, they go through fussy periods. Times when they will not eat meat or veggies or fruit, or some days when they will not eat anything that I offer them. It was during one of those periods that Woo and I were reading Chirp and came across a cute little snack idea that they called a "cheese train". It was basically a little train made out of cheese and tomatoes on a skewer. "Can we make that?", he asked, with big excited eyes. I assured him that we could and we finished our reading.
The next morning he woke up and came to my bedside to ask if we were going to make the cheese train that day. Then, as I was writing up our grocery list, he asked if I had added the food we needed to get make the trains. When we returned from the grocery store he asked if we could have them right then. He was EXCITED. I convinced him to wait until lunch, and figured out ways to beef them up so that the children could get a full lunch out of them. They were a great success and have become a regular feature at lunch time around here.
What you need is a couple of shish kabob skewers, small toothpicks, the items that you would normally put into a deli-style sandwich, and some cherry tomatoes or olives to act as the wheels. We usually us a couple of different kinds of cheeses, bread or buns, pickles, and some meat, either leftover chicken, deli-meats, or salami/kielbasa. All of these, except for the "wheels" are cut into cubes and then threaded on the large skewer to make the train's cars. You then take the smaller toothpicks and push them through some of the firmer items (I go through the cheese) to act as the axles. Then I cut the tomatoes/olives in half and attache them to the axles. The end result looks something like this:
As you can see by the hand reaching for the trains in the picture, they are well received!
Krista is married to Willy and mom to a 3 year old son, Woo, and 2 year old daughter Goose. You can find her at Life in the Hutch or on Twitter @kgraydonald
